1 comments about Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World.

1. MAX FACTOR
   The Man Who Changed
   the Faces of the World
   Fred C. Basten
   Arcade Publishing Inc.
   Hachette Book Group
   ISBN: 978-1-55970-875-3
   $24.95
   184 pages
   Reviewer: Annie Slessman
   
   Max Factor, a name known throughout the world as one of the leading manufacturers of cosmetics, was born in Poland as Max Faktor. Only when he entered the U.S. did the spelling of his name change. It seems an inspector misspelled Faktor and not knowing how to tell him otherwise, Max's last name changed forever to Factor.
   
   Max married Lizzie, his first wife when working as the make up artist for the Russian Royal family as well as the Imperial Russian Grand Opera. He could not let the Russian Royal family know of his marriage since it could jeopardize Lizzie's life. Therefore, the marriage and the subsequent children of the couple became one of the best-kept secrets in Russia for almost five years until they reached the United States.
   
   
   Once in America, Max and a partner opened an exhibit at the St. Louis World Fair. Although his exhibit was successful, Max's partner disappeared with all of funds earned from the exhibit and left Max penniless. Max, with the help of his brother and Uncle, opened a barbershop in 1906. It was the beginning of history in the making.
   
   Max Factor was a pioneer in developing make up for the movie industry. Unknown to most of us, he also made most of the wigs used in movies during the "Golden Age."
   He eventually took Max Factor to heights Max himself could never have believed in his early years. His entire family-sons, daughters and the son-in-laws were all well versed in the many divisions of his company and carried on his work after his death.
   
   This work not only tells the story of the rise of Max Factor as a world leader in cosmetics, it also leaves the reader with a wealth of knowledge with regard to the history of movies and television. I found the work well researched and well written, not to mention, irresistible and a page-turner.
   
   Fred Basten is the author of numerous books about Hollywood and the entertainment industry. A graduate of UCLA, he was the assistant to the public relations director at Max Factor, Hollywood and currently lives in Santa Monica, California.

5 comments about Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness.

1. Great book, with many great details.
   This book will tell you all you really need to know about this great man.
   The latest movie about Howard Hughes is nothing compared to this book. What was Hollywood thinking when they decided to make this movie? It did not say anything about his Vegas ventures, which was a crucial time in his life. If one knew about his time in the Flamingo hotel, it would have been easy to relate to his crazyness, mentality and thinking. Nothing also was mentioned in the movie about his voyages around the world, which started it all, and his life after his aviation follies. I know the movie was called "The Aviator", but if you did not know anything about Howard before you saw the movie, then all you would think was that he was some crazy aviator who wasted his time building a giant aircraft that was never used for military or commercial purposes, dated a movie star and was always concerned that the US government was out to distroy him. (Well, the government tried really hard!!)
   Who knows, maybe Airbus engineers had Howard Hughes in mind when they build their latest aircraft, the giant A380.
   Mr. Hughes will be forever the pioneer who started it all.
   In this book though,his life and his legacy are well preserved.
   It is very well written, it tells use about his dramatic life, his eratic lifestyle and behavior, his connections to everything that was going on in the US at the time, and his constant drive for perfection. Hero or not, he was sometimes crazy but also brilliant.
   If one really wants to know who Howard Hughes really was, all questions will be answered here. This book will tell you everything.
   Very long but really good read.



2. Howard Hughes is hot right now. Just like John Nash of "A Beautiful Mind"-fame was a few years ago. The movie "The Aviator" has been nominated for more Oscars than any other. And, after seeing the movie everyone wants to know more about Howard Hughes and attempt to crack the mystery that was his life.
   
   There is no question Hughes' character was mythical. He was part Chuck Yeager, Donald Trump, Hugh Heffner, Steven Spielberg, and a genuine madman all combined in a strikingly handsome 6 foot 4 inches body frame. After reading this book, however, you may find that Hughes was ultimately more successful at creating a myth than anything else. Looking at his private life and business ventures, you will conclude that he was a tragic failure.
   
   This book has to be the most detailed biography on Hughes. The authors conducted a Herculean research effort that entailed the examination of a quarter million pages of records and documents, and reproducing over 50,000 pages of them. They traveled to numerous cities in the U.S. and Japan to conduct this research. As a result of this unparalleled research, the authors wrote a tightly written 600 page book in extremely small font. Thus, it is not a quick read. But, it is incredibly informative and fascinating.
   
   The scope and the details on Howard Hughes business and legal dealings is extremely thorough. And, you get a real sense of who he was, the way he thought, the way he mismanaged every business enterprises he engaged in. Hughes was obsessive about so many things. In business, he developed a weird set of obsessions that included not paying any taxes, becoming a major airline owner at all costs, becoming an aircraft manufacturer and also a defense contractor at all costs. For him, manufacturing an aircraft for the Department of Defense became a lifelong obsession. Contrary to what the outside World may believe, Hughes was not a brilliant businessman. Much to the contrary, he was really a madman. For every dollar he did not pay or save in taxes, he actually lost a dollar fifty or so. Thus, his various tax schemes were disasters from an after tax return standpoint. He also did not have the organizational, and managerial talent to pull off any of his grandiose obsessions to economic fruition. Hughes would certainly have become much richer being just a regular Trust baby supported by the extraordinary capital generated by the company created by his father, the Hughes Tool Company. The latter made a fortune by developing the most advanced oil drilling head. It became so successful as to become nearly a monopoly throughout the entire worldwide oil industry. This invention created the fortune that financed all of Howard Hughes business fantasies and fiascos. However, if he had done so [just become a Trust baby] he would not have become Howard Hughes and offer us the spectacle of one of the most grandiose, grotesque, and tragic life of modern times.
   
   The authors also covers in detail Hughes social life, movie producing years, and his long and irreversible descent into madness. This part is easier reading than the legal business disputes. The psychological profile that emerges is almost unbelievable.
   
   The book does an excellent job of debunking several myths about Hughes. One of them is Hughes the world class philanthropist. Indeed, he is known has having given during his lifetime a fortune to medical research. Well during his lifetime, his creation of The Howard Hughes Medical Institute was nothing more than a leveraged lease tax avoidance mechanism. Most of his donations funding this nonprofit entity went back to him in the form of lease payments on properties rented from various Hughes corporations at above market rents by this institute. Nowadays, the IRS never would grant such a research institute any tax-exempt status. In the Appendices, the authors do an excellent job of documenting the cash flows associated with this tax avoidance scheme. Almost, zero % of the donation to this institute went to medical research.
   
   At the end of the book, the "Chronology" is an excellent timeline map to get an overview of Hughes life. I found myself referring to it constantly to get my bearings of where was I in this convoluted story. Did he incur his first major mental breakdown before or after his spectacular Congressional hearings where he outwitted and demolished his Congressional nemesis? Amazingly enough, a quick reference to the Chronology confirms that he incurred his mental breakdown before the hearings.
   
   Also, the Epilogue is brilliant. It fully captures the essence and drama of this life and provides a coherent thematic summary of this 600 page book.
   
   In any case, if you really want to find out more about Hughes this is the book.



3. Great book. Get's a little technical when taling about aircraft. But I consider it a must read for fans of biographies.



4. This is the only Howard Hughes biography that I have read, so I can only discuss in it absolute terms.
   I thought it was facinating, and that the level of technical and business transaction detail was right on the mark. The author also did a great job of presenting information, rather than going off on his own interpretation of the greater meaning in it all.
   The only reason that I docked it a star is that it need to have an Update written that fills in some of the gaps of what transpired after the book was written. When the book ends, there are still open questions around several lawsuits, investigations, business transactions, and the inheritance. I would think most, if not all, of these issues have been resolved in the 25 years since the book was published, but we are left wondering what the resolutions were.
   All in all, a great and gripping read.



5. After watching the movie AVIATOR about Howard Hughes' life, I had to know more. This book is extremely detailed as it goes through his many business deals in his life to his ultimate tragic end. I am fascinated by Hughes and this book gave me more than I could have expected. I wanted to know more about his personal life than his business dealings and his financial status and so I bought another one. He certainly was a poor soul who was tortured by his mental illness and having so much money it allowed him to create his own mental hopsital where he could go deeper into maddness and this book shows you exactly how that happened.

4 comments about The Wow Factor: How I Turned One Idea and My Unbridled Enthusiasm Into a Golf Revolution.

1. "The WOW Factor" is a well-designed business book that tells the story of how Barney Adams, the creator of the Tight Lies fairway wood and the founder of Adams Golf, turned a career of missteps and disappointment into a stunning success.
   
   I call it "well-designed" because it's not too long, not too serious, not too heavy and remarkably, if discreetly, candid.
   
   Adams ties his experiences, starting with his unremarkable years as a manager for Corning and ending with the realization that his executive leadership was not what his own company needed to be able to prosper, together with his WOW factor theory. Simply stated, he says hard work and a good product is not enough to crack into an established industry. The essential ingredients, he maintains, are the ability for your product to cause consumers to say, "WOW!" and the marketing technique to get that product into consumers' hands.
   
   While this may not be earth-shaking, he does offer it as caution to all those would-be entrepreneurs who believe they can make it in the fickle, trendy but inbred golf business.
   
   It's refreshing to hear a successful executive recount how he helped run a small company into the ground by taking too high-altitude a view of its operations. And it's intriguing to read how he desperately searched for a way to get golfers to try his innovative Tight Lies fairway woods.
   
   For business purposes, what the book lacks is analytical detail. Adams can tell you what, in hindsight, he did wrong and what turned out to be right. He really can't tell you why, except as a matter of empirical result.
   
   For insight purposes, Adams reveals little about his personal life, except for his obvious passion for his work. While the development of his golf businesses apparently cost him a great deal in his personal and family relationships, he touches on that issue only a bit.
   
   Still, it's a remarkably pleasant, quick read. Adams may be a seat-of-the-pants contrast to the standard modern MBA, but he seems right on target in the fashioning the kind of book that golf fanatics would enjoy.



2. Always nice to read about the golfindustry. Not just instruction or history is interesting so a nice read for all those who are interested in stuff like this.



3. As one reviewer already noted, the message regarding the WOW factor is simple, but too often overlooked. Anyone in sales or product development should ask themselves what their WOW factor is. Answer that question and you'll increase your market share, as Adams did.
   
   Beyond the business case, the book was a fun and interesting read. I'm a little biased, as I was an early adopter of the Tight Lies club, so I immediately knew what Adams was referring to when I saw the title of the book.



4. Barney Adams' determination and personal sacrifice is clearly articulated in the book. Following a complete accounting of how Adams Golf finds itself and reaches stability the book fails to take the next step in the life-cycle approach to strategic management with a discussion of how Adams has and will continue to re-event itself to prevent decline and future failure. Part Two "Inside the Golf Equipment Industry" was not very "inside".

5 comments about Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams.

1. The book provides a good description of Milton Hershey's life - his early struggles, his later success, the Cuban sugar business, his generosity and the building of the community in Pennsylvania and his relationship with it. Unfortunately, Hershey gave few interviews and wrote little so everything is one step removed and heavily filtered by the Hershey public relations machine. The author does a good job trying to dig for details and paint a balanced picture, but in the end the picture of Milton Hersey is blurry and the story is not engaging.



2. Michael D' Antonio has written a wonderful biography of Milton S. Hershey, the man who became a multi-millionaire by making milk chocolate a five-cent treat in the United States.
   
   Very much to his credit, D' Antonio delivers a biography of a complex man from another era without super-imposing contemporary politically correct value judgments. D' Antonio deserves a gold star or two for that.
   
   Milton Hershey's life is not an easy one to document; he was not an overtly public man. Rather, he led two lives. The first as reservd tycoon in his native Pennsylvania locale, the other as a a sometimes free-spending bon vivant traveling the United States, Europe and Cuba.
   
   D' Antonio chronicles Hershey's beginnings with his stern, no-nonsense mother with her Mennonite background and Milton's dreamy, never successful father. Backed with the unwavering faith of his mother and aunt and funds from his extended family, Milton pursued a career in confectionary. One business failure followed another, but Milton's faith in himself never faltered. Then he discovered caramels - and became the caramel king. Working with clearly limited resources, D' Antonio weaves an interesting story of an interesting man that becomes still more interesting when Hershey sees that the caramel market is limited.
   
   He sells out and could have easily retired to a life of luxurious ease.
   
   He had surprised everyone and married Catherine Sweeney, some fifteen years younger, whose actual background remains a mystery. She may, according to some, have been a "working girl".
   
   Though rich, Hershey pursued the dream of creating an inexpensive milk chocolate candy - and through native ingenuity and peristence succeeded. He built a multi-million dollar business that at one time controlled more than 90% of the U.S. market.
   
   The story of Hershey is fascinating. He built a town, Hershey PA, incorporating his utopian beliefs - and it worked. He created a sugar empire in Cuba that almost bankrupted him. He set up a unique orphanage and then endowed it with all his wealth. He was a mercurial man who could fire long-time employees in a moment of pique. He overlooked the failings of favorites.
   
   But no one (except perhaps some left-wing academics) could call Hershey a bad man. Almost alone among the mega-rich of the era, Hershey was animated by a true humanism and D' Antonio fully describes this without turning Hershey into a saint.
   
   Hershey is an exceptional biography. It describes an American original, Milton S. Hershey, a self-made man who shared himself with his workers, his community and his nation. Quite a guy and he has found himself in the hands of a very competent biographer.
   
   Jerry



3. "This book is almost as good as the chocolate bar. This biography of Milton S. Hershey and the chocolate company shows how hard work, ingenuity, and just plain luck produced the world's largest chocolate factory. The only thing that would have made this book better would have been a free sample of the product."



4. Michael D'Antonio has given us a serious biography of a complicated, but highly admirable, man. A "chocolate king" who founded a town and created and endowed schools and home for orphans is not a figure to be treated lightly, and D'Antonio does not fail. While there is no question that D'Antonio likes his subject, Hershey is not given a free pass. His enormous philanthropy is described right alongside irrational temper tantrums and firings. Spying on worker's drinking habits is described alongside his own gambling habits. The rise of the Hersey empire, and the town he founded, is described in great detail. The book opens with the drama of a challenge to the Trust of his school for orphans and the reality of business in this day and age. "What would Milton do?" is the question. What the book tells us is that it is by no means certain what Milton would do. He had contemplated selling his empire at more than one point, ensuring the resources for the continued care of the orphans in his charge. We see the rise and life of the Hershey empire, and Milton's relationships with others. The possibility of the true nature of his wife's illness is mentioned and described. Some have been offended by this, I'd suggest they get over it. It has no bearing on what type of person she was, or how much he loved her. We see the evolution of the business, the international interests, the town and school. It is a satisfying read. The only additional material I would have liked is some more description of Hershey's interactions with some of the other business and political leaders of the day. We are told of a feud with Wrigley, and the suspicion that Wrigley had cheated in gambling, but little else. We know of TR's trust busting, and that Hershey was considered to be quite apart from the Robber Barons of the day. Did TR and Hershey ever interact beyond the one or two mentioned invitations? If so, how? This historical information may not exist in the archives, but was the only gap I felt while reading.



5. The only thing I really knew before reading this book is that Hershey chocolate has been around a long time and there is a town themed after it somewhere in Pennsylvania near Amish country. Boy was I undereducated in this realm.
   
   Milton S. Hershey or M.S. as he was later known was the epitomy and poster-boy for American capitalism at it's grandest hour. Starting off as an apprentice to a Confectioner he was able to start learning the tricks of the trade. He found his life's calling and tried his hand at a few candy businesses primarily focusing on caramel chews. At this time in America, chocolate was not like the chocolate we have today (which is due almost entirely to M.S.) it was a rough texture that wasn't that tasty. The only people in the world that understood how and mastered the making of milk chocolate at the time was the Swiss and they guarded their secret with a passion. Eventually, after a few failed attempts at businesses in both Philadelphia and New York, he returned to his home to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was then that he started experimenting with trying to master milk chocolate. In fact after he had begun construction on his new factory in what would be known as the Town of Hershey, he still had not gotten it right, he was experimenting with a chemist up until the time the factory was completed when he got it right.
   
   The book is wonderfully written, It makes you really take a step back and think about not only the history of Hershey, but America itself. A time when companies and products were an explosion onto the American scene more than any other time in our Country's history. The book also takes a very intricate look at Hershey and his drive to support the Orphans that were taken in by Hershey's Industrial School, that, on paper own the Hershey company which has been a major issue over the years.
   
   I was so enthralled by this book that I am going to be picking up another book on the same industry called "The Emperor's of Chocolate" about the wars between Hershey and the Mars Candy Company. If you are looking for a great read and knowledge of corporate American history this is a wonderful book to read.

5 comments about Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance.

1. This is a study of the recent history of finance economics, disguised as a biography. Not that there's anything wrong with that....
   
   The revolutionary idea that Perry Mehrling has chiefly in mind in the title of this book is the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Mr. Mehrling argues in a nutshell that for Fischer Black, the options formula that would make him famous and that would win two collaborators a Nobel Prize in economics in 1997 was but one application of this model.
   
   A key theme of the book is that at least two "revolutions" have contended for mastery in the worlds of finance and economics, and that for a time in the 1960s the two revolutions, CAPM on the one hand and the efficient-markets hypothesis (EMH) on the other, appeared to be but two arrows in the same quiver. Only over time did it become clear that a choice might be required. Black opted for sticking with CAPM and reasoning from there, and Mehrlig approves of this choice, contending that Black was ahead of his time and that economics today is still struggling to catch up with some of the other inferences he drew from CAPM, in business cycle theory in particular.



2. The author has done a very good job on two fronts. One, he has dissected a complex area of corporate finance and made it readable to someone with a decent grasp of business. Considering the complexity of CAPM, and how far it stretched conventional wisdom, that alone would be good for 4 stars. However, Fischer Black was an extraordinary person, moving between academia and the practice of devising new financial instruments for Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs with an aplomb few could match.
   
   If you enjoyed this book, then I heartily recommend Peter Bernstein's Capital Ideas as well.



3. Fischer Black was not only a revolutionary thinker, he was an eccentrically original human being. Professor Mehrling's biography is a clear, concise account of the development of modern finance, and also a richly detailed portait of a complex man.



4. Fischer Black's life and somewhat rebellious style of thinking are taken under the lens in Fischer Black and The Revolutionary Idea of Finance. Clearly written for those interested in economics and finance, the author illuminates the personalities, relationships and debates that drove Fischer Black toward his famous contribution to options theory. It interestingly highlights the important role Fischer Black's understanding of Jack Treynor's Capital Asset Pricing Model played in shaping his views of the investment universe and in developing the Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model.
   
   Why not 5/5? While the author only indirectly points to Fischer Black's controversial insights and revolutionary attitude as a potential cause, we are left to speculate about the reason why he was not awarded the Nobel Prize. It would have made the story line more interesting to see this unfortunate outcome addressed.



5. Revolutions spring from unlikely sources.
   
   Fischer Black was an unlikely revolutionary. He thought like no one else. While teaching, his colleagues attacked problems with formulas and models. Fischer Black did not. He opted to explore them from as many different angles as he could conceive. Once solved, he generated a formula. Solving problems this way, Black found he avoided formula-dictated thinking ruts.
   
   His teaching style was bizarre. He got bored teaching regurgitated knowledge. In his view regular lectures were a waste of time. He developed an engaging teaching style by asking 50 open-ended questions. Combined with his insistence that students learn the language of finance, this interaction gave air to brilliant minds. Black cherry-picked great ideas. His students loved the vibrant seminars.
   
   Fischer Black became famous for what he cared less about: the Black-Scholes option model. Options were just a passing interest. He cared more about Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) developed by Jack Traynor. He sought to apply it to economics.
   
   He failed to leave a legacy in traditional economics. Fischer Black had degrees in physics and mathematics but no formal training in economics. In academia, he became recognized as forward-thinking in finance, but out of his depth in economics.
   
   Robert Rubin, then the managing partner of Goldman Sachs, said it best when he sold his partners on the idea of hiring the academic Black.
   
   "We will learn from Fischer," he is quoted by the author as saying, "and he will learn from us."
   
   Fischer was egoless. He took rebuttals in stride. Open to change, he was an unapologetic believer in free markets. His unorthodox style sparked a revolution in the business of finance. His innovative thinking drove finance to the forefront of the science of economics.
   
   Perry Mehrling has written a brilliant biography about a brilliant man.

No comments about Call Me Ted.

No comments about Visionary Railroader: Jervis Langdon Jr. and the Transportation Revolution (Railroads Past and Present).

5 comments about The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co..

1. If you've ever wondered what goes behind closed doors in boardrooms and corner offices when CEOs want to build their companies into empires, The Last Tycoons is a good book to consult. Cohan puts readers inside the confidential meetings that helped re-shape corporate America and gave birth to the modern conglomerate. However, the books size and sheer amount of detail can seem a little overwhelming at times.
   
   There are pages upon pages of testimony transcribed when it comes to the ITT-Hartford deal that plays a major part in the book and incredibly nuanced blow by blow, minute by minute descriptions of how Lazard's partners became partners, what they did, who they talked to, what they said and what letters they wrote to whom. While Cohan's research and knowledge of the subject is certainly highly impressive and obvious within the first 100 of the 668 pages of banking and M&A history, the minutia and seemingly endless reproduction of memos and letters written as far back as the 19th century, give the book a rather gossipy undertone. If you're a new employee of Lazard or thinking of joining the company, this is the kind of history you might find incredibly advantageous to come in and hit the ground running in your first few months on the job. For the rest of us, non-bankers, this is information we wouldn't be upset to find briefly summarized.
   
   Ultimately, The Last Tycoons accomplishes what it sets out to do. It provides an excellent history of Lazard Freres from its founding as a store in New Orleans to its public listing and captures and describes the larger than life people at the top and how they changed the company over its long history. If Mr. Cohan were to briefly summarize the 200+ pages of ubiquitous reproductions of memos, letters, testimonies and highly detailed minutia, the book would be even more enjoyable.



2. If you are interested in the story of Lazard Frères & Co. from its founding to its current incarnation as a public firm run by Bruce Wasserstein, this is your book. William D. Cohan worked at Lazard for six years and got to know the stories and the key people. He has done his research and provides insights about the leaders and top rainmakers of the company. This is a book more about people than deals. The author uses the deals to illustrate aspects of the person being discussed. Even when deals are being discussed, the actual business details are kept to a minimum. This is probably wise since only finance people would be able to follow a truly technical discussion of the logic and means of the M&A activity Lazard specializes in.
   
   This book gets quite personal about the lives of the men this book focuses on and the big names do not come across very well. Beyond their personal peccadilloes with women other than their wives, they are also vain, petty, vicious, greedy beyond measure, and disloyal to anyone and anything but a fee. Some of the betrayals and vendettas described in this book are shocking. The lesson to take away from these stories is that you have to realize the kind of folks you are dealing with when you are dealing with this level of investment banker and never assume anything, never do anything on trust, and understand that they are going to do precisely what is in their self-interest even if it means betraying you. Now, I am not saying every investment banker is like this, but so many of them are that you have to protect yourself by acting as if all of them are.
   
   The business of investment banking as practiced by Lazard, giving of advice rather than supplying capital, also comes across poorly. It seems to be full of self-dealing, puffery, outright deception, insider trading, betrayal, compromised ethics, and many other sins that are justified by the millions upon tens of millions of dollars they make. Their treatment of their employees, especially female employees, is shockingly atavistic and justified because the underlings getting misused will learn to make millions by being around these "great men". The egos are so outsized that no amount of self-justification seems to be beyond them.
   
   Lazard, until Wasserstein, was really three companies. They were in New York, Paris, and London with a number of branch offices. However, it had been run by Europeans for most of the 20th Century and their outlook and way of doing things was quite intricate, secretive, and without a hint of a need to do something because it was right (at least as how it is described in this book). Oh, there is a lot of talk and public posturing about being pure and moral, but behind Oz's curtain it was very different as the lawsuits, investigations, fines, and other facts demonstrate. Again, it was and remains all about the money. As the old saying goes, "It isn't really about the money; it's about the amount of money."
   
   Look, I don't know these men. I have never met any of them. I don't know what they are really like. Maybe the author has painted them very different than they really are. However, there seems to be so much evidence, so many witnesses, so much now out in the open, that what is provided here in this book seems pretty convincing. This is a long book, but if you are interested in getting into this rats nest, Cohan has provided a tour of the nest and a handbook about the lives of the king rats.
   
   One little side note. I have often warned people not to confuse rich businessmen with being capitalists, conservatives, free market types, or even Republicans. Well, these bankers call themselves capitalists and that makes some sense because of the way they pursue profit (even without risking capital). However, readers of this book will note that these bankers were ALL power players in the Democratic Party. Regulation and favorable laws suit them and their industry well. They use government power to protect themselves from competitors and to gain special treatment for themselves and their clients. So, do NOT confuse these people with being free market conservatives. They are much closer to a privately managed socialism with themselves as the string pullers and profiteers. However, it also suits them to let people vent their anger about greedy bankers against the political party they oppose.
   
   I do wonder why the book had NO pictures of the key players, places, or things discussed in the book. Maybe the author and publisher decided we could all find what interested us on the Internet. However, I would have preferred some photos in the book.
   
   Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI



3. The book reads like a novel with fascinating histories of one of the most secretive and successful of Wall Street's investment firms. The characters are well known to everyone on Wall Street starting with Felix Rohatyn, Andre Meyer, Michel David-Weills, Steve Rattner and then none other than Bruce Wasserstein. What has not been well known about the internal working relationships of the partners is revealed in wonderful detail for the first time by an insider who captures personalities dealing with greed and power as well as personal triumphs and shortcomings. As one who has been involved with matters of client investments and Wall Street for nearly 50 years, I found the book immensely interesting and revealing in ways truly unexpected.



4. There is much that is interesting in this detailed story of Lazard, the enigmatic Wall Street M&A advisory firm. However despite the plaudits the book has received (e.g. FT business book of the year for 2007, beating our Alan Greenspan's autobiography), it falls far short of the great Wall Street histories in the tradition of Ron Chernow (on the Morgans) or Niall Ferguson (on the Rothschilds). Cohan is a decent storyteller, but in the end this long narrative fails to do a number of things:
   
   1) Gain more insight into what Lazard bankers actually did. We hear repeatedly about Rohatyn's endless deals but never get a good sense of how he sold the business, what those deals entailed, and what his bankers actually did to earn their enormous fees. In particular I would have liked to learn more about how the nature of M&A advisory work has evolved over the past 50 years (Cohan talks about the 'spreadsheet revolution', but never goes into any detail).
   
   2) Keep the international thread. He starts with a cross-Atlantic perspective with the story of founding of Lazard in France, but following Andre Meyer's move to NY during World War II, he drops the narrative of the British and French firms, only returning to them in passing towards the end of the book. It seems somewhat arbitrary to ignore those Lazards entirely.
   
   3) Talk more about the industry. Cohan is clearly captivated by the big personalities like Meyer and Rohatyn, or scandals like ITT, but he fails to talk much about how the investment banking industry evolves in the post-war period and how other Wall Street firms grew alongside Lazard.
   
   4) The Jewish angle. There are oblique references to Lazard's Jewish roots and identity, and occasionally to issues with anti-semitism that came up with employees and competitors, but Cohan never addresses head-on just what the firm's Jewish identity meant (if anything) and how it differentiated Lazard from the so-called blue-blooded firms.
   
   5) Most importantly, make the case for why we should care. Why does Lazards justify a 750page history in the first place? Cohan seems to think there was something special or unusual about the firm but never really makes the argument for what made this any different from dozens of investment banks and hundreds of finance businesses.
   
   In the end, although there are elements of criticism in the book, it reads too much like an authorized corporate history and lacks much real insight into the the history of American banking. Anyone interested in the latter might spend his or her time better elsewhere.



5. With extensive access to all players involved (except one, who declined to be interviewed) William D Cohan does a marvelous job in recounting the history of a bank from another time and the history of investment banking right into the 1990s.
   When reading the book I could not escape the feeling that Lazard was almost run like a personal fiefdom of the David-Weills with a few `stars' like Andre Meyer and Felix Rohatyn allowed to drive the business and take their cut along the way without ever questioning the authority of the owner. The bank has done quite well out of this arrangement, but this set-up has made it near impossible to run the bank in a `normal-managed' way. Michel David-Weill's attempts to install a General Manager were always doomed to fail because he would have had to relinquish authority he was unwilling to give up. William D Cohan shows how he drove one after the other `Managing Partner' round the bend if not into the nuthouse. Bruce Wasserstein appears to have got the better of the owners by turning the bank into a `normal' bank. Whether this was a good deed you have to decide for yourself. I thought the bank both gained and lost at the same time.

5 comments about Maestro : Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom.

1. I read this book wanting to be better informed about how The Fed and Greenspan operate, and wound up being nicely informed and entertained. Understanding how banks, the White House and political appointments co-exist in the field of economics, I never thought I would ever use the phrase "hard-to-put-down" in connection with an economics/banking book but this one really did it for me. It is a genuine page turner and definitely Woodward's most underrated and under-discussed books. (No caller mentioned this work during his 3-hour C-Span interview a few months back.) Get your hands on a copy of this book and prepare for an interesting and enjoyable ride. My one complaint: I wish it were longer. Although this book answered all my "Fed" questions, I wished its time track would continue to the present, or perhaps delve a little deeper into the past. But this minor complaint notwithstanding, the book was an excellent and engaging read.



2. Among collegiate literature which I have been exposed to, I have found Bob Woodward's Maestro to be one of the most informative and educational. With this simple and easy to understand narrative, I have been taken inside the doors of the Federal Reserve, and have been given a picture of how the FOMC truly operates. I feel more equipped to discuss and express opinion towards the operations of the Fed. Upon the completion of this book, I sat back with a sense of gratification, in my newly acquired, practical understanding of the U.S. economy. Woodward was able to portray Monetary Policy in a sense that really applied to my level of thinking.
   With an inside look at the decisions of Alan Greenspan and his role as chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was stuck with a sense of amazement watching this man operate mathematically and politically, still maintaining a sense of pure awareness and concern for the long-term affects of his resolutions. I would definitely recommend this book to any reader in search of a practical and realistic understanding of the economic engine which drives the U.S.



3. The coziness of our nations politically elite always makes for interesting reading. While there are some interesting tidbits throughout, i.e. Alan Greenspans association with Ayn Rand; the familiar names of the politically entrenched and the precarious state of our nation's economic machinations, this book was a bit boring. With that said, there were two things I found fascinating about D.C. life. First, there is an extremely strong current of Ivy League uber-ambition in our nation's capital; along with an extraordinary confluence of academic uber-achievement (PhD's lawyers & double majored PhD's). Second, I didn't know Alan Greenspan, along with his longtime and classy arm-charm Andrea Mitchell, were such savvy political operatives on the so called D.C. cocktail circuit or what a critical role socializing played in the running of our country. Other than that, I was a bit disappointed with this effort.



4. After reading this book I realized how fascinating a book can be when it is written by a washington insider like Woodword. Amazing book describes Greenspan, Fed, Whitehouse and the economics and politics behind it in the most lucid manner possible.
   
   Very true in nature expresses very candidly Chairman Greenspan's political manuevering and how Whitehouse makes a non political instituion political.
   
   Excellent and much more interesting to read compared to Mr. Greenspans own auto biography which in itself is a very good book.



5. ~Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom~ is a rosy bit of economic subterfuge heralding Greenspan as an economic saviour when in reality we're paying the price for the Federal Reserve's inflationary scheme throughout the 1990s. If the markets set interest rates, we wouldn't see the vicious cycles of boom and bust, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the housing bubble. But such subversion is always attendant to fractional-reserve banking. A wiser more honest Alan Greespan wrote an essay entitled 'Gold and Freedom' in the 1960s. Therein, he observed: "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation... The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Greenspan intuitively knew this was still true when Rep. Ron Paul of Texas grilled him in hearings before the House Banking Committee.
   
   People can mock the alarmists and goldbugs, but the U.S. Dollar is poised to fall over a precipice of hyperinflation in the twenty-first century. For years, it has enjoyed prestige as the reserve currency of central banks and reserve currency for OPEC exchange, but it is steadily starting to unravel. Too much public sector indebtedness, a 10-trillion dollar debt, trillions in unfunded federal liabilities, and an aging workforce will all point to American economic decline. In the 1990s, almost 65-70% of U.S. Dollars in existence were in circulation abroad. There is no telling how much it is today. The results will be catastrophic if a shockwave hits, and those Dollars come back home in mass. It doesn't necessarily entail a 1929 crash, but it will likely result in economic stagnation where inflation surpasses real economic growth and/or near-double-digit unemployment.
   
   There is nothing special about Greenspan. He had wisdom to get out and find a fall guy in the new Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke. Bernanke will take the hit for his mistakes. Bernanke is afraid to do any needed correction, or surgery in the form of tightening monetary policy, and will continue to prime-pump the economy and foment an inflationary shockwave and economic stagnation. The cure for inflationary woes is always more inflation. It's a melancholy fate, and the market correction will be devastating. His career will be short-lived and he will be the scapegoat. John Keynes, hardly a model economist, was prescient nonetheless when he observed: "By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some....The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."
   
   "The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."
   --Thomas Jefferson

5 comments about Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins.

1. this book has more substance than is typical for the genre, and i was hooked on every page; wish there were more pages and illustrations :-)



2. Tom takes the opportunity to get his view of events in his life on the record. Very doubtful as biography, this book is more of an attempt to sway public interpretation of events in his long career, spanning early years in Hewlett Packard, the formation of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm, his sailing exploits, his marriage to Danielle Steele, and how he chose to use his vast wealth to influence events and people he encountered. Right up front he deals with the spying incidents at Hewlett Packard when Pattie Dunn was the chairwoman (very condescending), as well as his relationship with Carly Fiorina (very confrontational and rocky), but most of it comes off as self-serving and slanted to his view. Yet, the book is interesting as an peek into the restless and eclectic mind of the ultimate bootstrapper, a man who leveraged his times and opportunites into one of the most successful careers on record. Despite this, it also serves as a warning to those who believe great wealth is matched with great wisdom, since clearly, his wealth was poured into his world class collection of toys and houses. Take heed.



3. The book is a few interesting stories from his life told as if it were over several dinners and several glasses of wine.
   
   I personally like the conversational style and flow of the book and so highly recommend it.
   
   These are just a few vignettes from his life and I'm sure there are many more stories to tell.



4. Perhaps I'm the only one, but I found this book to be basically unreadable. (As such, I have only read a small part of it.) Tom Perkins is an impressive person with a successful career by many standards, and I am interested in what he does for a living even, but suffice it to say he is not one of our nation's best writers.



5. As an aspiring young entrepreneur, I found Tom Perkins' Valley Boy a most enjoyable read. I was able to easily relate to many of his stories, although my experiences are drastically different. I can understand why many people do not find this book enjoyable - they can not relate. While I would recommend this book (and already have) to most of my friends, I don't think it is written with a wide enough audience in mind. If I were given the opportunity to meet with Mr. Perkins, I am sure we could devise a more appealing piece of writing. His genius and creativity are quite evident, but his point of view as an author needs some adjustment.